House Arrest

"Curious thing, rooms. Tell you quite a lot about the people who live in them."

"Crooked House"

Volume 7 of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Kindaichi, Age 37") will be released this week, will probably take a while before I'll get to it though... (Limited shipping options at the moment).

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the special Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo ("The Young Kindaichi Case Files") project Stay Home Satsujin Jiken (The Stay Home Murder Case). With everyone being asked to stay home as much as possible, series writer Amagi Seimaru (AKA Kibayashi Shin) decided to produce a #StayHome-inspired murder mystery. Mitani Kouki did something similar when he used his weekly newspaper column to publish a brand new Furuhata Ninzaburou story to bring some much-needed joy to people's lives, but Amagi's project can be described as far more ambitious, as his Kindaichi Shounen story was made to be filmed as a short live-action drama! Of course, because it's advised to not go out, all the actors filmed their own parts at their own places. These individual parts were then edited together in a Zoom-like screen, allowing everybody to 'play together' in one scene without actually being physically together (the story does pretend everyone's together in one room). The voice actors of Hajime and Miyuki from the television series reprised their roles for this special story (obviously, they got Hajime and Miyuki as profile pictures), and it surprisingly does feel like a genuine Kindaichi Shounen short story. Other roles were performed by actor-acquaintances or themselves (Amagi's own older sister Kibayashi Yuuko was cast in the role of the victim), while the background scenes too were presumably filmed at the Kibayashi family home.

In the previous post, I also explained how this drama was released in two parts.  The first part was released on Youtube on May 31, while the solution was released as paid content a week later. I wasn't sure whether I'd discuss the second part/solution at the time, even though I had a pretty good idea who the murderer was/how to prove it, but I did finally manage to watch the second part, so I decided to write this short follow-up post.

To go over the story of Stay Home Satsujin Jiken again: Inspector Kenmochi has to self-isolate due to a nasty fever, so he asks Hajime to help him with the investigation into the murder of Komatsuzaki Akane, a middle-aged woman who made a fortune with her own company. Because her dog had been barking for days, her neighbors became suspicious and when the police entered the very spacious Komatsuzaki manor, they found a stranged Komatsuzaki. The main suspects are the three persons known to have visited the victim on Friday, the day before Komatsuzaki is presumed to have died. The housekeeper, the victim's niece and the Uper Eats delivery guy all met Komatsuzaki that day for chores and deliveries, but none of them seemed to have noticed anything weird about Komatsuzaki at the time. Komatsuzaki always changed the code of her door lock after people visited her, so it also seems unlikely any of these three could've entered the manor on Saturday to kill Komatsuzaki. But as Hajime pokes around the home, he starts to suspect something else is going on.

Like I mentioned in the first post, Stay Home Satsujin Jiken does feel like a real Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo short story despite the unique circumstances in which it was produced, but that also means that a lot of it is rather familiar in terms of plotting. There is a focus on visual clewing of course, but it's fairly simple here (probably partially because they had to prepare all the story props themselves with 'normal' objects you have lying around at home) and most people will soon realize what the main contradiction is that allowed Hajime to identify the murderer. Some clues are just lightly changed versions of ideas and concepts we have already seen in earlier stories in this series, so fans will immediately recognize them. A different trick used by the murderer to protect themselves is actually I don't immediately remember as having ever seen in the Kindaichi Shounen main series, but I do know it's one of the possible tricks seen in the brilliant Kindaichi Shounen videogame Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo - Hoshimitou - Kanashimi no Fukushuuki ("The Case Files of Young Kindaichi - Stargazing Isle - The Sad Monsters of Revenge"), where you play as the murderer and have to make sure Hajime won't catch you (yes, it's an inverted mystery game!). On the whole, Stay Home Satsujin Jiken is not a remarkable mystery story, but it's definitely a very fair one and with a little effort and thinking, you should be able to pinpoint the murderer. Who, of course, has A Tragic Backstory. Because what else?

In the conclusion of the first post on Stay Home Satsujin Jiken, I wrote " If my hunch is right, Stay Home Satsujin Jiken may perhaps not be extraordinary if one looks only at its merits as a mystery story, but I think I will forever remember it as a special piece of mystery fiction, a memento of that period in 2020 when the world was different, a detective story where you absolutely need to understand the context in which this was produced. It's an immensely odd murder mystery, created in immensely odd times." I don't have much to add to that actually. If we had seen this story in the manga, I'd have shrugged and just considered an average Kindaichi Shounen short story that doesn't do anything wrong, but doesn't stand out in any way either. It's the story behind how this story was produced that sells it, and in that regard, I think it's definitely worth remembering that in 2020, we had that one weird Kindaichi Shounen story filmed over Zoom with laggy sound and creepy talking profile pictures of Hajime and Miyuki. I guess we'll see more StayHome-related mystery fiction this year: I know there's an anthology coming up in August titled Stay Home no Misshitsu Satsujin ("The Stay Home Locked Room Murders") with Kitayama Takekuni as one of the contributors for example and it'll be interesting to look back in few years to look at all the COVID-19-related mystery stories.

Original Japanese title(s): 『金田一少年の事件簿STAY HOME殺人事件』